Just the idea is cool. Then again, I grew up with cheesy sci fi flicks on Saturday afternoon and devoured most of the ERB ouvre. (There was even a time when I thought Robert E. Howard a fine writer*.:))

In my considered opinion it's about damn time we got back to adventures and story lines. I'm sick of the 'RPG as wargame' paradigm. TSR failed not because people got sick of 'story', TSR failed because they wound up producing crap.

So good luck with the beast.

And remember, "Many men smoke, but Fu Manchu."

*Then again, in a past life I knew Robert. Stereotypical closet homosexual if you ask me. Most everything he did was an attempt to deny his nature. I think the closest Howard ever came to putting himself on paper, as he saw himself, was Solomon Kane. Conan was Bob as he thought he should be.

After reading the first entry in the Design Journal I have a suggestion. Since the figuring of the target number for skills uses multiplication why not include a table in the back of the book near the character sheet. I mean every folder I ever owned during school in the 80's had one in them. Only this one would need to go from 1 to 20 instead of the usual 1 to 10.

After reading the first entry in the Design Journal I have a suggestion. Since the figuring of the target number for skills uses multiplication why not include a table in the back of the book near the character sheet. I mean every folder I ever owned during school in the 80's had one in them. Only this one would need to go from 1 to 20 instead of the usual 1 to 10.

Just a thought.

Good idea, too---in fact, in the James Bond 007 game, the multiplication table was ON the character sheet.

Plot Twist Points (aka PTPs): Pulp heroes never just fail by sheepishly falling on their face (unless they're the Comic Relief in which case the failure probably doesn't matter much)--they fail in ways that send the adventure off in a whole new direction. So if you fail at something, you can spend a Plot Twist Point to convert it into a "skewed" success -- you'll either nominally succeed at what you were doing, but it will turn out to have prices you didn't expect --

(GM: "As the flames run along the ceiling beams, the drug dealer on the balcony draws back his knife, PCP-crazed glow in his eyes...."Jake Barton, Trucker Vice-Cop: "I shoot him right between the eyes! (rolls) 97. Frick. Okay, uh, Plot Twist Point!"GM: "Your foot shoots out from under you just as you pull the trigger; the bullet goes awry and smacks a burning support beam right amidships... and with a vast creaking and groaning crash, the entire balcony collapses, burying the dealer in a mass of flames."JB: "WOOHOO!"GM: "It also buries the door leading out."JB: "Crap.")

-- or your failure will turn out to be more beneficial to you down the road than you might expect -- after all, if Han Solo had never failed that sneak-up roll on the stormtrooper in RoTJ, the Rebels would never have made contact with the Ewoks and the Emperor's plan would have worked....

Plot Twist Points (aka PTPs): Pulp heroes never just fail by sheepishly falling on their face (unless they're the Comic Relief in which case the failure probably doesn't matter much)--they fail in ways that send the adventure off in a whole new direction. So if you fail at something, you can spend a Plot Twist Point to convert it into a "skewed" success -- you'll either nominally succeed at what you were doing, but it will turn out to have prices you didn't expect--

EXACTLY.

That's similar in some ways to the way Jared Sorensen's octaNe handles GM influence on player actions (partial control and moderator control), which allows the GM to either introduce an external force that changes the situation, describe an unforeseen event which changes the direction of the plot, or just make things more difficult.